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1. The Dust Bowl is a kind of tornado. ___

2. Rainfall is scarce in the Great Plains. ___

3. Forests are the natural vegetation of the area. ___

4. Dust storms are created by the cutting of the trees. ___

5. In the 1930s many farmers had to leave their lands because of dust storms. ___

 

 

 

The Dust Bowl was a part of the Great Plains region of the southwestern United States. Much of the soil there had been damaged by wind and rain, and many severe dust storms occurred. The soil in this area was subjected to water and wind damage because the protective cover of vegetation was impaired or destroyed through poor farming practices and the grazing of too many animals.

The area included parts of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma. Rainfall has always been scanty in this region. When rain does fall, it is usually accompanied by strong winds. The temperature rises or falls rapidly. The natural vegetation of the area is short grass, which furnish good grazing for animals, and also helps to keep the soil from washing or blowing away.

Much of the Dust Bowl was sown in wheat during World War I, to meet the great demand for this grain. The wheat, as then grown, did not adequately protect the ground from winds, and the soil began to drift.

The most severe dust storms began in the Dust Bowl in the early 1930s. In 1934 great curtains of dust were carried clear across the continent to the Atlantic coast and far out into the Gulf of Mexico. During such a storm it was impossible to see for more than a few feet, and some persons in the area wore masks to protect throat and lungs. Farmhouses were sometimes nearly hidden behind drifts of dust. Many farm families left the region.

In order to escape the Dust Bowl more than 200,000 homeless and hungry people travelled on Route 66 towards California, where they hoped to find jobs and homes. Did their dream come true?

The following passage comes from The Grapes of Wrath, a novel written by John Steinbeck in 1939 and one of the most famous novels of our time.

 

 

1. Who were the Okies?

2. Where were they going?

3. How were they traveling?

4. How did the resident people react? Why?

5. How did the migrants’ feelings change?

6. Do you think similar reactions can be found in your country today?

 

[…] And then the dispossessed¹ were drawn west – from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas families, tribes, dusted out², tractored out³. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousands and fifty thousands and a hundred thousands and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless – restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do – to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut – anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got⁴ no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land.

We ain’t⁵ foreign. Seven generations back Americans, and beyond that Irish, Scotch, English, German. One of our folks in the Revolution, an’⁶ they was⁷ lots of our folks in the Civil War – both sides. Americans.

They were hungry and they were fierce. And they had hoped to find a home, and they found only hatred. Okies – the owners hated them because the owners knew they were soft and the Okies were strong, that they were fed and the Okies hungry; and perhaps the owners had heard from their grandfathers how easy it is to steal land from a soft man if you are fierce and hungry and armed. The owners hated them. And in the towns, the storekeepers hated them because they had no money to spend. There is no shorter path to a storekeeper’s contempt, and all his admirations are exactly opposite. The town men, little bankers, hated Okies because there was nothing to gain from them. They had nothing. And the laboring people hated Okies because a hungry man must work, and if he must work, if he has to work, the wage payer automatically gives him less for his work; and then no one can get more.

And the dispossessed, the migrants, flowed into California, two hundred and fifty thousand, and three hundred thousand. Behind them new tractors were going on the land and the tenants were being forced off. And new waves were on the way, new waves of the dispossessed and the homeless, hardened, intent, and dangerous. […]

The great highways streamed with moving people. […] They were migrants. And the hostility changed them, welded them, united them – hostility that made the little towns group and arm as though to repel an invader, squads with pick handles, clerks and storekeepers with shotguns, guarding the world against their own people.

In the West there was panic when the migrants multiplied on the highways. Men of property were terrified for their property. Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants. And the men of the towns and of the soft suburban country gathered to defend themselves; and they reassured themselves that they were good and the invaders bad, as a man must do before he fights. They said, These goddamned⁸ Okies are dirty and ignorant. They are degenerate, sexual maniacs. These godddamned Okies are thieves. They’ll steal anything. They’ve got no sense of property rights.

And the latter was true, for how can a man without property know the ache of ownership? And the defending people said, They bring disease, they’re filthy. We can’t have them in the schools. They’re strangers. How’d you like to have your sister go out with one of ‘em?⁹ […]

And the migrants streamed in on the highways and their hunger was in their eyes, and their need was in their eyes. […] And the anger began to ferment.

 

 

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